On Today, George W. Bush Weighs In on President Trump

In case you doubted that the state of American politics had taken a turn for the weird, George W. Bush—a once reviled figure for liberal-leaning America—has emerged as not just a symbol of breathtakingly moderate conservatism, but also as (surprise!) a staunch defender of the media. (As Aziz Ansari once put it: “What the hell has happened? I’m sitting here wistfully watching old George W. Bush speeches?”) Bush appeared on the Today show this morning to promote his new book of paintings and stories of veterans, Portraits of Courage, and spoke out about the state of our democracy, Russia’s influence, and President Trump’s various incendiary positions. (His own were both well-considered and notably well-elocuted for a president who was never famous for his oratorical talents.) Asked if he had ever considered the media to be, as Trump has repeatedly stated (perhaps most recently at CPAC), “the enemy of the people,” Bush calmly replied that in fact, he had spent a good deal of his presidency trying to assuage other institutions of the opposite. “I considered the media to be indispensable to democracy; that we needed the independent media to hold people like me to account,” Bush told Matt Lauer. “I mean, power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive and it‘s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.”

Recalling his own presidency (and time spent as a target of media critique, though he acknowledged that the current media climate is a drastically different one than he encountered during his two terms), Bush explained the importance of setting an example for leaders around the world. “One of the things I spent a lot time doing was trying to convince a person like Vladimir Putin, for example, to accept the notion of an independent press,” Bush said. “And it‘s kind of hard to, you know, tell others to have an independent, free press when we’re not willing to have one ourselves.” (As for Russia‘s possible interference in the election? “I think we all need answers.”) And when it came to Trump’s travel ban, Bush extolled America’s history as a place of freedom, noting that “a bedrock of our freedom is the right to worship freely.” He added that he was for “an immigration policy that is welcoming and upholds the law.” As one viewer put it: George W. Bush truly seems to be enjoying his “no longer the worst president since WW2” media tour.